Truly Human Leadership

When Lean was introduced to the Barry-Wehmiller organization a number of years ago, CEO Bob Chapman's concern was that people would be lost along the way. But we found a way to adopt Lean methods and stay true to our Guiding Principles of Leadership.

Instead of using Lean to reduce waste, we use it to reduce frustration. It's part of the bag of tools we use in continuous improvement to ensure a stable and thriving business for the benefit of our people. It's part of our overall Operational Excellence strategy. Our vision is about engaging people's head, heart and hands in creating their own future and actively shaping the legacy of the business every day.

On this podcast, we take a look at how our approach to Lean puts people at the center to make it about eliminating frustration, not waste. In addition, you'll hear an interview with Jacob Stoller, author of The Lean CEO. Jacob's book features a number of organizations, which, like Barry-Wehmiller, found a way to empower people, not processes. And that is the true power of Lean.

John Michel is a former Air Force General who has not only used his leadership experience in service of his country, but also to help transform businesses into places that think more about people than profit.

John has written two books, (No More) Mediocre Me: How Saying No to the Status Quo Will Propel You From Ordinary to Extraordinary and The Art of Positive Leadership. He has written articles for the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Huffington Post, National Geographic, Joint Forces Quarterly, and the Washington Post.

In addition to writing and speaking about leadership, John has held executive positions in the transportation and aeronautics industries and is an entrepreneur in the hospitality industry.

John talks about his leadership journey and what he's learned from Barry-Wehmiller in an interview with Brent Stewart and Mary Rudder on this podcast.

Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is Barry-Wehmiller's consulting company that helps organizations identify, develop, and equip leaders. They bring the lessons we have learned at Barry-Wehmiller and our principles of Truly Human Leadership alongside scientific methods to provide individual and organizational assessments, training, and consultation. They help their clients drive exceptional results through a culture where people and performance are in harmony.

On this THL Refresher podcast, we bring you a discussion between two of Chapman & Co.'s leading partners, Sara Hannah and Matt Whiat and Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman. This was done at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the three use Barry-Wehmiller's experience during crisis to give leaders insight into how they may handle their own. But it's not a discussion that is limited to the unique situation of a global pandemic. Crisis can hit business at any time.

Rhonda Spencer is Barry-Wehmiller's Chief People Officer. She has been with our company since before the development of our Guiding Principles of Leadership and was one of the major voices in its creation. It's her primary responsibility to be the steward of our values and make sure that light shines to the furthest reaches of our organization.

Rhonda joined Brent Stewart and Mary Rudder on this podcast to talk about the nuts and bolts of how we try to make everybody feel like they matter at Barry-Wehmiller. She also talks about how she became Barry-Wehmiller's first Chief People Officer and what the position means to her.

Imagine going to get coffee for your team and finding your coffee maker had been repossessed.

In the early 1980s, Barry-Wehmiller was in trouble as a business, but we learned to embrace the lessons that arise during times of adversity and uncover the opportunities hidden within periods of crisis.

BW CEO, Bob Chapman, tells this story in his book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring For Your People like Family, co-written with Raj Sisodia. On this podcast, Bob talks about challenging times in Barry-Wehmiller's history in greater detail. Many of the lessons learned during that time were lessons that informed BW's journey to Truly Human Leadership more than a decade later.

Here are some insights on the effects of burnout:

• The World Health Organization (WHO) officially recognized burnout as an occupational phenomenon in 2019. It estimates that over 75% of professionals worldwide experience burnout at some point in their careers.
• According to Gallup, burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day and 2.6 times more likely to actively seek a new job
• The American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress and burnout cost U.S. businesses around $300 billion annually due to absenteeism, reduced productivity, and healthcare costs
• A study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that individuals with burnout are at a significantly higher risk of developing mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.
• A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health revealed that individuals experiencing burnout were more likely to report personal conflicts and difficulties in maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Our guest this week, Neha Sangwan, MD, CEO and founder of Intuitive Intelligence, is a physician, engineer, author, speaker, and communication expert. Her new book, Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life deals with her struggles with burnout and gives practical life advice to coping and overcoming burnout in the workplace and in a very stressful world.

A few years ago, the World Health Organization added "burn-out" to the International Classification of Diseases. Here's how they define it: Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

Quite a while ago, we learned from the Centers for Disease Control that your immediate supervisor is more important to your health than your primary care doctor. If burn-out results from chronic workplace stress, we're seeing that to be true.

And it makes sense. 74% of people say the workplace is the leading cause of stress. On Monday mornings, there's a 20% increase in heart attacks.

On this podcast, you'll hear an edited version of a webinar featuring Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman and Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Dying for a Paycheck, called, "The Next Leading Cause of Death: The Workplace?" They'll talk about this crisis and what leaders need to do to solve the issue.

As we've talked about in several past episodes of this podcast, Barry-Wehmiller's CEO, Bob Chapman, has a passion for transforming the way business education is taught in our universities. We want to transform these institutions that train people to manage into institutions that foster Truly Human leaders who honor individual dignity and demonstrate the courage to care for others. It's why we helped found the Humanistic Leadership Academy.

But it's not only important to teach students how to be truly human leaders, the teachers must model those principles as well.

On this episode, we feature a conversation between myself, David Pickersgill (who is on Barry-Wehmiller's outreach team who is working with the Humanistic Leadership Academy) and Abhimanyu Gupta, an Instructor in the Department of Operations & IT Management and Interim Director of Emerson Leadership Institute at St. Louis University.

Our conversation with Abhi discusses how he approaches his relationships with his students and why modeling behaviors of truly human leadership is important. And then we talk about his experiences with the Humanistic Leadership Academy, why he became involved and how it has affected him.

Throughout his writing career, Raj Sisodia has put together a roadmap of how businesses can be a powerful force for good in the world through powerful stories of conscious organizations and their leadership.

However, in Raj's new book, Awaken, The Path to Purpose, Inner Peace and Healing, he uses his own story to show others how to turn inward if they want to be an effect, empathetic and truly human leader.

On this podcast, Raj talks about the circumstances that inspired his turn inward, which then inspired the idea to write the book. But we also place it in the context of why the story he tells in Awaken is important for leaders.

It was Simon Sinek who coined the term "Truly Human Leadership."

Simon and Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman became fast friends when they first met years ago. Simon wrote about Barry-Wehmiller in his book, Leaders Eat Last, and he also wrote the foreword to Bob and Raj Sisodia's book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring For Your People Like Family. He is a significant voice and one of our most important allies in spreading our message.

In 2015, Bob and Simon recorded this conversation around the release of Everybody Matters. We re-present it to you in this THL Refresher podcast.